It’s another year in the number one spot for Merchantcantos. The company says a big highlight of the past year, along with award wins, has been opening offices in San Francisco and Berlin as well as further expansion in HK, Dubai and New York with Asia particularly fruitful.
It hasn’t all been plain sailing though, says Merchantcantos: “Pre Brexit there was almost total stasis in the market as clients waited to see what was going to happen,” with the same thing happening in the US in the run up to the presidentialelection. But, the company says, projects are moving again and the year has been pretty good over all.

02
the edge picture co
edgepicture.com
Md Phil Blundell Credits Sextortion for The National Crime Agency; Ask Yourself for Deloitte; Finding Patience – The Later Years for NHS
Second place for The Edge this time in what marks a particularly historic year for the company as it celebrated its 25th year in operation. “We were also awarded Production Company of the Year for the first time at the Cannes Corporate Awards and were crowned New York Festivals’ Production Company of the Year for an unprecedented 10 years running.”

Jack Morton says an important move over this last year has been a successful internal restructure of the business. “The highlight for us has been the seamless integration of our Content Studio into the wider business while retaining its strong culture, breadth of capabilities and experience.”

It’s not been long since it expanded across the Atlantic but that’s starting to bear fruit, says Casual: “Having invested heavily in our US office, it has been good to see its expansion really take hold.” In the US, business has been good and in the UK too, says Casual apart from the last quarter of 2016, as businesses reassessed post Brexit.

DRP has further beefed up its already sizeable Midlands base with a £1million investment in its facilities “now sitting on a 4.5-acre site, including a third studio, a doubling of our production facilities particularly around digital, and post production and motion graphics. A £200,000 investment was also made in the team for training and development” and £175k in data security systems.

Radley Yeldar has focussed on continuing to take a bigger slice of the communications pie by “persuading clients and building upon our digital capabilities to deliver all manner of digital experiences that utilise moving image craft and elements (but not full films) to enhance the impact, navigation and immersive qualities of these digital experiences.”

“A truly historic 12 months,” is how Media Zoo characterises its past year. Much of that excitement comes down to havng been “unanimously voted EVCOM’s Production Company of the Year by a panel of esteemed client-side judges. This included senior representatives from Lloyds Banking Group, Petrofac, Amec Foster Wheeler, Virgin Trains, Prudential, HSBC, Bird & Bird and GSK to name a few.”

Psona beat the incumbent Ogilvy to get the job of producing BP’s launch film for its partnership with the International Paralympic Committee and bagged the year long online film campaign featuring international paralympians’ stories. “These were released throughout the year in the countdown to Rio. To date the films have received over 20 million online views.”

09
the moment
wearethemoment.com
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Big changes for The Moment. Russ Lidstone, former ceo of Havas Worldwide London, joined as ceo. This was followed by a tie up with events specialist, WRG. “The partnership, called The Creative Engagement Group, will bring The Moment’s services in film, digital and VR to WRG’s experiential offering.” The group also now includes Just Communicate.

10
scorch films
scorchfilms.com
Mds Tristan Ramsay and Steve Jay
Credits For the Love of Eurostar for Eurostar;
What is Nutmeg? for Nutmeg;
MX-5: The Icon for Mazda
In terms of creative successes, Scorch Films points to producing its first piece of fully animated virtual reality content for Renault “to be distributed across their European dealer network.” The company also picks out the 26 character animations for the BBC Bitesize online portal that it produced in under six weeks.
Looking to the year ahead, Scorch Films plans to continue “to expand our range of services and build out our advertising, digital and animation credentials to complement our corporate core” as well as “building our VR capability and capitalising on the increasing demand for technology-led video formats.”